


A House of Bread and Sugar

by owlaholic68



Category: Original Work, Urban Shadows (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Fae Food, Fae Magic, Force-Feeding, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kidnapping, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Past Abuse, This kid does not have a Good Time, Trauma, Victim Blaming, disregard for human life, narrative parallels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29759532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlaholic68/pseuds/owlaholic68
Summary: Delos eats and eats and eats like Hansel being fattened up, except instead of eating him the Fae laugh and laugh and laugh at him.
Kudos: 1





	A House of Bread and Sugar

Delos should have known better.

He regrets opening the door for the Fae. As soon as he sees Callie’s wide grinning face, her sharp teeth glinting in the dim light of the hallway, as soon as Delos realizes he’s stuck his elbow out of the threshold of the doorframe: that’s the moment he realizes he’s made a horrible mistake.

Callie grabs his arm and yanks him out of the protections of the apartment.

“Come with us!” Angelica chirps from over her leader’s shoulder. It’s not a question. “We’re going to have _lots_ of fun!”

Delos’ stomach already hurts. He shakes his head in protest. “I – I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but it – it’s past my bedtime and – and it’s late, I’m sorry-”

They all laugh.

“Oh, but you’re a _big_ kid,” Tabi comments. They’re suddenly behind Delos with firm hands on his shoulders, sharp fingers digging into his collarbone. “You can stay up late just this once.”

“We won’t keep you too long,” My chimes in. They close the apartment door and Delos’ last chance of fleeing back in there fades. Not that he was ever going to be able to manage that with four of them surrounding him. “Just until you’ve had _enough.”_

All the Fae laugh again. Their chuckles have a sinister note. Tabi and Callie’s hands on him are too tight. Tighter than Miss Felicity’s ever was, though she had longer nails.

Thankfully, Delos had been in the habit of wearing his slip-on shoes around the house, though he didn’t have a jacket on. He shivers when the Fae push him out onto the street and into one of their sleek cars.

They get him into the backseat. Tabi climbs over him to buckle him into the car. The buckle itself looks foreign and otherworldly: there doesn’t seem to be an obvious release.

Oh no. Delos’ last scrap of a plan was to unbuckle himself when they weren’t paying attention and get out of the open-top car and – and run, he supposed, though he didn’t know where. But now he can’t unbuckle himself and there’s no way out and he should’ve seen this coming and he’s trying really hard right now to have a vision but he can’t. He hears the echo of Miss Felicity yelling at him in the back of his mind: telling him that he’s stupid and worthless and he needs to have a vision, _now,_ or else bad things are going to happen but he’s trying and trying and he can’t-

The car starts and he panics.

“Whoa, whoa there,” Tabi tries to soothe, pinning Delos down as he starts to struggle and squirm his way out of his restraints.

“Please, please, I – I don’t want to go, _please-”_

Callie, in the driver’s seat, chuckles and gives a glance back. “Chatty little boy, isn’t he?”

“Very chatty,” Tabi agrees. “Nobody ever taught him how to shut up.”

That’s blatantly untrue: Miss Felicity had him trained to shut his mouth. It only took her a week, a few agonizing bites, and then all she needed was to sternly glance in his direction and he understood that no more talking was allowed. Talking was rarely allowed around Miss Felicity unless it was relaying a vision.

“P-Please just let me call Faidra and tell her where I am, she – she’ll be worried about me,” he begs. “Please – _mmph!”_

“Be a good boy and chew this for me,” Tabi demands. Their hand is over Delos’ mouth, having swiftly popped something small and colorful in there while his lips were open.

He doesn’t. Tears start to pool in the corners of his eyes, fogging up his glasses. He shakes his head no and keeps the object in his cheek. He knows better than to eat anything that they give him.

Tabi pokes his cheek with a giggle. They lean in so close that their nose brushes Delos’ new hearing aids. “Eat it, or we throw you in the trunk,” they threaten in a gleeful whisper. “It’s nice and dark and tiny in there. Do you want that?”

Delos shakes his head again. A tear rolls down his cheek. He dutifully chews and swallows.

Miss Felicity had never thrown him into a trunk, but she had put him in a suitcase one time when he was really bad. It was constricting and dark and she didn’t let him out for hours even when he screamed that he was really sorry and that he was going to be good and listen and do whatever she wanted and even when he begged and begged until his voice broke and his legs cramped and he could hear her ignoring him and doing other business and it was awful and even though she only did it once he always remembered it and he always tried really hard to be good after that-

The car starts moving and he yelps but no noise comes out.

Oh no, oh no _oh no oh no-_

He screams but he hears no sound. The Fae laugh again, but at least that soothes one of his fears: he can still hear. It’s just that he can’t make any noise.

“Good boy,” Tabi purrs. They braid his short hair on the ride to wherever they’re going. Delos sniffles and tries really hard to stop crying. Miss Felicity would be mad if she saw him acting all pathetic like this. It’s the memory of her fingers pinching hard on his cheek to get him to _calm the fuck down and stop acting like a baby_ that gets him to finally stop blubbering.

The drive lasts too long. They’re taking him too far.

At least they take him someplace familiar: Strulo’s. They park behind Sugarbell Bakery and lead him through the back door, Callie and Angelica leading while My and Tabi steer him with tight grips on his arms.

It’s late: the bakery is closed to the public but the lights are still on.

There’s a moment where he could run, actually: his captors let go of him to push tables and chairs together. The other two Fae are chatting with an older woman, Miss Azalea Sugarbell, the owner. Nobody is really paying attention to him. He could bolt out the back door and only take alleyways too narrow for the cars or – or he could try to get across the street to Mister Strulo.

But that would only cause problems, not just for him but for Faidra too. Because that’s why they’re doing this, isn’t it? To get Faidra somehow. It would make things more difficult for her. And she’s been so nice to him that he doesn’t want to make problems.

Plus, what if he fails? He knows all too well what happens when you try to run away and you don’t make it.

He slowly backs away from the Fae towards the back. Indecision is making him hesitate.

Two large hands clap down on his shoulders. He flinches and yelps, his voice coming back from whatever they fed him earlier.

“Sit down, darlin’,” a heavily Southern-accented voice purrs from behind him. “Time to eat!”

Delos bursts into terrified tears. That sounds too much like Miss Felicity and he doesn’t want to eat, he’s not hungry and he’s scared and he wants Faidra and he wants to go home and he’d even want Miss Felicity right now if it meant that he didn’t have to be here-

The Fae drag him over to the chairs and make him sit. Angelica tucks a napkin into his shirt. Callie picks up a fork.

He tries to resist eating at first, but they feed him something that makes him weak and dizzy and pliable and numb. A sickly-sweet jelly that they spread on cookies and scones, he guesses. It doesn’t taste right. It doesn’t taste like it’s from this world.

Whenever he tries to protest, he finds another bright blue mushroom in his mouth to shut him up. It’s all washed down with a sweet lemonade that clings to his throat and makes him thirstier and hungrier even after he’s eaten three more whole cupcakes and more slices of cake and spoonfuls of heavy gelato and lots of candy of every flavor and type and they won’t stop, they just won’t stop-

He whines when they try to feed him another huge slice of cake. Closes his mouth and tries to turn his head away but finds he can’t really move anymore. The lights of the bakery hurt his eyes. Everything is purple and green and yellow and wrong colors.

“Aw, baby’s had enough,” Angelica croons. She’s holding him upright ever since he lost that ability hours ago. “Baby’s _full.”_

“Baby’s _full?”_ Callie pries Delos’ jaw open and shoves the cake in. “I don’t think so!”

He chokes and sobs. They cackle. He begs for mercy and they laugh even harder. He cries for Faidra, for Miss Felicity, for anyone. They mock him.

“One more,” Callie cajoles. She takes a heaping spoonful of that awful jelly and smears it over a streusel muffin.

“More,” Angelica suggests. She smooths back Delos’ hair. “More, more!”

“He’s just a _kid,”_ Tabi argues. “Just a little bit more.”

Callie giggles and adds another half a spoonful of jelly. “Oh, alright. Open wide!”

He doesn’t have much of a choice: Angelica makes sure of that.

That last one was too much after all: he can’t move anymore, can barely even summon the energy to chew anything. Consciousness is not so stable, either: he drifts in and out and back in to hear his phone ring.

His aching stomach sinks. No, no, that must be Faidra worrying about him and she’s going to realize and she’s going to come here and get caught herself and get hurt all because of him, it’ll be all his fault again.

The Fae have been talking about their plans for her. He wishes he’d been more drugged for that part so that he wouldn’t remember, so that he wouldn’t know. He wishes that they’d leave her alone and if there was anything he could do to make that happen he would do it.

Faidra had done the same for him, hadn’t she? Miss Felicity had wanted him but she’d gone instead and so Miss Felicity didn’t want him so much anymore so she stopped killing and hurting people and it was awful but at least it worked and so maybe he can do something too to sacrifice himself. Maybe they’ll be satisfied to play with him instead of her.

But Miss Felicity was straightforward. Easy to understand once you got to know her. She wanted things and if you were able to give her those things then she was satisfied.

But these monsters never seem to be satisfied. Delos is terrified that they’re going to end up _killing_ Faidra.

 _Don’t break your new toys too quickly,_ Miss Azalea Sugarbell the baker had warned when they’d come in a few hours ago.

 _We’ll try,_ Callie had promised with a carefree laugh. _But no promises!_

Play with Faidra until she breaks: that’s their goal.

Delos is scared that the _breaking_ means _killing_ and that it’s going to come too soon and there’s nothing anybody is going to be able to do to stop it.

He can’t lose Faidra. He can’t, he can’t, he can’t and he won’t if he can do anything about it…


End file.
